Weighed, Measured, and Found Crazy

The bad guy Count Adhemar in A Knight's Tale says to the hero William, "You have been weighed. You have been measured. You have been found wanting." Naturally, in the end, William's friends turn these words against Adhemar. The scene resonates with me due to my own insecurity and my long held ambition to make a mark as a writer and movie director. There are a couple of faces that spring to mind as being the sort of disgusting self-styled snob who would go so far as to try to mentally sabotage those of us who have specific goals to achieve. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone running a screenwriting group ostensibly for writers to read and comment on each other's works in progress might be motivated primarily by the need to be the focus and the decider, perhaps pushing what might be called the dogma of Syd Field and Robert McKee format even in a culture where many different storytelling styles might be aching to get exposure and might not survive adaptation into the presumptive blockbuster streamlining. I can say that I have more memory of abuse from those communities than useful feedback. If anything, time can be wasted following the alternate rabbit holes of random opinions given without focused consideration. The preference is for feedback to come from people whose own work you admire and who will look at a draft as indicating what it is you care about and from that how well you are serving that concern. I made the mistake of being candid about my night job, due to the need to travel there after each monthly meeting instead of joining the rest or the writers for a beer. I had a security guard job. If someone chooses to look down on that, they ignore the fact that it did allow me to read screenplays and give considered notes on them. In the realm of sharing notes with strangers, online outlets like Zoetrope.com and Triggerstreet.com were somewhat useful and at least you could tell something about the reviewer by the willingness to rite more than 200 words and the specific relevance to the manuscript at hand. Nothing against the study of Syd Field's Screenwriter's Notebook for example or Story by Robert McKee and various other books about writing but these should be part of a Recommended Reading list and not sources for generic go-to comments to pass off as thoughtful coverage. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` If someone is a toxic person, even though they might appear to believe in the most humane left-wing ideology their fascist heart can be exposed by the tactic of attacking the individual speaker and assigning a pathology to them instead of engaging the arguments with logic and without the expectation that your "facebook friend" is the enemy. Even if it is disguised as a teachable moment, that can tend to be so crass that it is a slap in the face. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` The tricky trap is that there are some who believe or push the principle wherein the mental instability or trauma of a small percentage of those reading or following must set the tone and limitations of what can be said and how it can be said for fear of "triggering" them. While we all might have compassion for someone's trauma, this has escalated to the level of the victim as ruler. If one makes any complaint, he or she will be accused of "playing victim," yet complaints often do have to be conveyed one way or another. If someone has legitimate claim to vulnerability or victimhood, however, it is not a workable situation to stifle and censor all thought that fails to placate that person. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I don't find it necessary to name names. If someone wants to be an idiot and say that I have spoken out about his/her actions, that is out of my hands. But the principles are more important than the personalities. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone asked for volunteers for a project in her back yard. I responded with an e-mail and mentioned I have a camera I can bring. This was agreed. I was to document. I happened to bring two cameras, the second one being capable of shooting tape for an hour unbroken. So while walking around documenting the volunteer work, I allowed this person to frame up each or three camera positions - each one running an hour - that might be used as part of a demonstration. So I spent some time over there. As essential as the three hour-long shots might have been, there had been no effort to secure this for the project outside of my randomly showing up. As well thought out as the presentation might have been, this person then was not able to firewire onto a capture card of the computers on hand. Documentation of the volunteers on my other camera was easily imported. But I left my camera overnight so more attempts could be made to capture video. When that failed, I returned to pick up my larger camera and I spent another four hours trying to capture and also burn discs. Two discs went fine, but the third shot had some glitches and I wanted to know if I should persist. I e-mailed that there were two discs that turned out but not in full 1080 HD, only DVD quality. I also sent via Facebook a similar message and uploaded sped-up files of all three shots to indicate what was done, noting that at high speed I could be seen waddling around fast and that might be a distraction. I got NO RESPONSE as to the next step from this genius. Do I drop off the two good discs or try to get something out of the third? I had discovered that my camera playback/record heads needed cleaning if I was to record anything again. I looked into taking it in to Canon in Mississauga to get the lens cleaned and heads cleaned. (Turned out that exercise was horrible because Canon workers there won't make money from cleaning lenses or heads, only for a deposit over $300.) Time passed as no phone calls, e-mails, nor Facebook messages were answered. I did my distracting and anxiety-filled back and forth with Canon and their techs trying to scam me. And before I knew it, I was hearing indirectly that the presentation that had been planned never happened. I had gotten through by phone only to be told my timing was strange. I did not press to find out what this meant, and only then did I learn the thing was a bust. I had no indication as to whether I was expected to do more than I had. I had not spend five hours at a semi-friend's place and four more at mine working on that as a prank. There is only one communication style that is worth anything when you have deadlines and specific things that need to be done: Direct, clear communication with a specific intention. There is nothing between the lines in a non-response. There is only disrespect and perhaps madness. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Ove the course of a year, my only communication to this person was two supportive notes (along with other people) on Facebook threads. One was about being small after being big for a while, and I said, "You are big." The other was about the Netflix series Sense 8 the Wackowskis did. I commented like someone else that even if their content might seem to message-driven and can be a bit much they know how to direct. Finally, a crazy falling out happened (if there was anything to fall out) because I commented on a linked blog that was factually weak. It was complaining about "the male gaze" driving movies and in its three cited examples it included Fifty Shades of Grey and neglected to mention that its director Sam Taylor-Johnson was a woman and that the novelist who had control over the project was also female. It also jumped through hoops with diagrams trying to prove that the geometry of the framing in Mad Max: Fury Road forced the movie to be more respectful to women.... neglecting to mention that Imperiator Furiosa and the whole movie was the product of writer-director George Miller and his 70 year-old male gaze. If you like the heroine of that flick, thank her maker. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` It did not help that a guy I had unfriended a year previous for abuse chimed in for some virtue signaling to throw shade on the ignorant sexist (me). The only lesson I learned from that back and forth and the following morning was as follows: If your Facebook account is beeping whenever someone posts, don't procrastinate about disabling that function. Don't let others and their random input drive your day. Also, make your point and then leave any conversation. There is a tactic some use in which they widen the scope of a discussion beyond the specific item for which you have an opinion. The wider the umbrella, the more disrespectful it is to clarity and the finer points. By the end of it, you can end up with your name all over the page and people seeing remarks out of context. This is baiting. The imbecile who chimed in also lured me to address side-issues and then the next day deleted his own remarks and left mine hanging without context. My own direct message to the owner of the page asking what was really going on was not answered. So I could see the value of my remarks: nothing. I deleted each of my posts. When the owner of the page realized this, there was a manic attempt to paraphrase the discussion with multiple highlights of my name - again to restore the vulnerability of my name being all over the page and this time with less context. I could have sent a printscreen or frame grab to Facebook with a complaint of harassment. That might have been the wise course of action. Instead, the person unfriended me. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` There was some back and forth in Personal Messages trying to get to the bottom of it all, and finding only spin and a completely false recollection of something from 15 years prior. Of the project, the only mention was one of being grateful for my help, although it is doubtful how that could be anything more than ironic. I was told this person likes me but that on Facebook I was a terrible person and a troll. I began to correct the errant memory that had been referred to from the year 2000, and got back a rambling and hyper mess of words telling me not to communicate again. My only response was to go a step further than unfriend and actually block this individual, which I should have done to my shade-thrower the year before. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I have posted commentary tracks to a few of my short films on youtube, and I started with one for the short that was mentioned from 2000. The sound quality and picture were both murky once I posted it, so I took another stab at it. But because the first version included an allusion to this individual walking from the location, I got indirect feedback on it. The first time around, I had a prop - a VHS tape - and I mentioned something scandalous the self-righteous protester shot which had aired on TV. I had nothing to show from it, but I flipped up the tape guard and pointed at the half-inch tape and said, "There's the nude shot" or something to that effect. The second time, I could not find the tape prop so I let it go. I got an automated e-mail in an account that only a few people knew, advising that am instagram account had supposedly been started by me and that my name was something other than my own. There was a picture of a little boy on the fake account and some message like "I have a podcast." ```````````````````````````````````````````````` When some people get indirect they can be very creepy. I also received a mess of Facebook friend-requests from accounts that seemed fake, like a little girl I did not recognize whose parents I did not know and that was filled with professional-looking photos. Many fake accounts were like dating ads. I had to actually block some so that they would not automatically follow me. I was told that both my troll and this person I had recently blocked were conspiring together to send me these annoyances and also going after the page for my planned film. So their attacks did have quite a great deal of bashing me by name. I know that it caused one friend to stop replying to me (on matters unrelated) and his wife to unfriend and block me. I can only imagine the range of evil slander that has been spread - and over what? If I could anticipate that sort of enemy being killed, I am not sure that I would make an effort to stop that. I look forward to the obituaries of even that mundane level of adversary. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` My generation was raised on Norman Lear, Princess Leia, Mary Tyler-Moore, the Bionic Woman and Murphy Brown. Yet, we are likely to be called sexist for not being excited about the 2016 Paul Feig version of Ghostbusters. There are people who will "other" you and shun you for disagreeing with a sub-issue despite genuinely holding many of the same values. No matter how it is spun, it really may just come down to assholes in sheep's clothing. And mad, mad, mad vindictive jerks cloaked in the flag of decency.

Film Appreciation: Directing

Various Shorts from the recent past

Some new, some as old as 15 or 20 years.

Ghostbusters (2016) Angry Movie Review + Rant!

These guys are entertaining and accurate.

30 Years a "Director"

2014 marked 30 years since directing the first video short I had aired back in 1984. I may be repeating myself, but since it is unlikely that the reader has combed through all my blogs, this won't likely seem redundant. It cycles around in my head anyway, so it all remains current. Ten years in, it was 1994 when I graduated the Humber College three-year program in Film and Television Production. Ten Years after that was kid of a pivotal year, 2004. By then I had started over somewhat and I had a Bravo!Fact short Klepto the Clown and an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artists grant for my 22-minute short musical satire Big Babies. I had joined the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) in 2003 and had taken over that year as instructor for LIFT's Directing Actors For the Camera course, which was an interesting experience I embraced; I ended up calling some of the students back for a free additional class once the camera actually became available. Would have been handy in the actual two-day class. 2004 also involved some fallout from taking someone at her word and not yet understanding the pitfalls of collaboration that may be unique to one unfortunate case. I took a workshop in Legal and Business Affairs for Filmmakers and Producers, but it would have been more handy a year previous. Everything must be in writing in terms of what is expected and what volunteers are agreeing to. It's not enough to say here is the square peg of a movie I plan to make and here is the round hole of money I plan to spend. I can pat myself on the head for being right in the abstract, but I would have preferred to anticipate and protect myself better. Sometimes people avoid bidding on a job offering to volunteer for work that a production can't afford to properly reward anyway. I also that year spoke out and let myself be the lightning rod for criticism when I questioned the founders of a film troop raising money ostensibly for the group and then deciding to spend it all on one of their own personal projects without subjecting it to vote. Money can be a real monster. Those funds were earmarked for at least four unspecified shorts to be voted on by the collective. Time has healed most of those wounds, but I'm sure at least one ally of my adversaries then went on to actively badmouth me and continues to be a dreadful person. 2004 is also the most recent date for a directing credit I have on imdb.com. I finished out that year with a barium enema and colonoscopy, appropriately enough, the results of which were apparently mishandled and lost -- which I did not discover until a year of inquiries passed and 2006 began. 2006 brought the passing of my dad from cancer and a loss of interest in a screenwriter's circle at LIFT and also the drowning death of Roberto Arigenello at LIFT who had been such a community-binding figure there. A couple of years passed where I continued renewing my membership, but I was not as active with the group. It also changed locations, which seemed to mark the new era even more firmly. Flashback to 2005 which contained one dialogue-heavy script that I let someone else direct, which turned out okay once the chore of editing finally fell to me, and a mind-reading adventure feature that I tried a few times to shoot with Super 8mm film and which I recast and re-started at least 3 times. Having our own cameras and editing software can be the difference between one or two years. 2005 also brought my diagnosis of type-two diabetes, which explained bouts of sleepiness. I continued to get short films and videos accomplished over the next few years and used some night shifts to evolve my screenplays and other writing and storyboard sketches. Without that. I might have been in limbo. 2014 has meant some progress and closure to writing projects and a sense of new energy and focus. An aneurism from late 2011 did not put me down for good; instead, it might have goosed me into improving projects that had stalled. It put off some work that might have gone into improving a 2010 short The Fashion of the Christ, which is currently still having its audio replaced due to my mistake of using the built-in mic of my Canon XH-A1. At this point, I need to get momentum and a sense of mission again. Movie writing and directing are not a "hobby" for me. They are my vocation. I still have a job insecurity, but if that erodes my identity then I'll be dead in the most significant sense. Life in 2015 as I enter the forth decade of my relationship with movie-making it has to be more than an unrequited obsession. In October of 2013, a directing workshop I paid to attend frankly stated that "people get hired to direct if they are the sort of person the producer wants to have a beer with after a shoot." That seems evident by much of the TV we see, and by the apparent new normal where storyboarding is rare and the cinematographer may be coming up with the shots (or calling them). If this is the case, I'll continue to be the odd man out. I like and respect storyboarding and I say it's okay that the "cut" is implied or forced by it. The frame and the cut are critical tools of the director, and merely to "cover" a scene in "real time" is just not interesting or cinematic. Hypocritically, I will end up doing a feature this year -- which will indulge in what Hitchcock called, "Pictures of people talking." But even that will contain a few careful cuts or moves that might make it more than the close-ups, overs, and establishing shot that will carry the bulk of it. I've transferred some updated copies of my footage from Klepto the Clown, Big Babies, and a film short from 1994 this past year for the internet and posterity in general. There was a 2014 20-year reunion of some of my Humber classmates. They seem to be doing well and most of them still keeping a foot or more in the movie industry. I feel like I have a toe in it. Another issues that caused reflection was that a screenplay I wrote for during my time at Humber for an independent filmmaker (around 1991-1993) was produced in 2011 and released in 2014 without giving me proper credit for co-writing nor any money. I still have to sit down and air my grievances about that, which I should have done during Festivus. Meanwhile, I have tried stand-up comedy for the first time, and though I don't know if it will be a lifestyle or craft that I cultivate, I can if it helps position me or goose me with my movie-making. But even visiting home for the holidays I am reminded how it can be an effort to even coral family members to co-operate with a short. Even reaching back to original resources can be a stretch. It is just so easy to put things off that maybe there is nothing wrong with being a nag and beig willing to inconvenience people. There are qualities I took for granted in my youth which can be replaced all to easy with neurotic second-guessing and self-negating faux etiquette. There will be people who accommodate an idea or a prank or a project. The point is to keep looking and maybe cast the net wide.

story pitching

Talking to a Wall 2: Courses and coverage

Two Van Tuesday

Film-making memory. This falls into, "the hand of Providence protecting me from what I want." It can be the smallest of issues that allows Murphy's Law to enforce itself in the demonic details of life, the o-ring that is frozen just enough to change size and let gas escape when heated at launch time. Friends were making what was then a Calling Card short film and the director asked me to help out for its five day shoot ostensibly as continuity but generally as "an ally on the set" which might be a term picked up from Buskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. I mentioned that all but the Tuesday would be okay, and that an actress we knew was moving and I had agreed to help her on that day and this was understood so Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were the days I agreed to. I also helped in the days leading up if there was input requested, and also ended up helping on a secondary shoot and with a sound recording day weeks after this main week. But despite mentioning the Tuesday prior commitment a couple of times and even during the Monday shoot on location and even being razzed about it as to my reason for helping this woman move, my friend the director was on the phone with me Monday night and seemed rattled that I actually did mean that I was intending to stay on course and help someone load and unload a moving van Tuesday instead of standing-up the actress and doing the more fun option of hanging out and filming and then just resume with the production on the Wednesday. They had my Polaroid camera (this was 1999) and continuity papers, and plenty of advance notice. To this day, there have been many of opportunities I've said no to just because filmmakers don't HEAR or have selective memory about availability and they believe "in for a penny, in for a pound" and that all else doesn't exist once a production starts. In hindsight, I would have let down the girl because she ended up having a few people help her. That Tuesday was spent riding in a van with the other helpers. I have an over-developed sense of commitment. When I checked back in with my director friend, he decided that the person who replaced me can stay with his project for the rest of the week. I learned later, however, that nothing had been shot that day anyway because they spent it traveling in their equipment van to a location and then finding it unsuitable and returning so the producer could find a different house. I missed a day of riding in a van because I was riding in another van. Had I relented on Monday night, and stayed on to (I thought) indulge in my preference of movies over being a mover, I'd likely not have been accused of disloyalty by the actress and no harm would be done; I would be climbing out of the film van and quipping something like, "Well it's a good thing I blew off my other commitment," If I wanted to be a dick. To top it off, the A.D. from the shoot, a young woman who seemed nice enough for much of the first day, who did not know me at all, apparently had a lot to say. When I picked up my Polaroid, I got the sense that a LOT of spin-doctoring had begun. My frequent runs to the washroom were the result of water pills treating cranial hypertension which had caused me to collapse months before and had damaged my optic nerves. I had recovered enough balance that by summer I was pushing myself a bit. I recall a lot of little things, like when the art department guy didn't have impressive enough prop groceries I suggested stuff from the craft services table and helped stuff the bags. I had thought the day had gone well. There was a little edge from her when it came time to take a Polaroid of the cast and crew. It that photo still exists, I am not in it because I am shooting. The A.D. offered to take the photo but when I explained a subtle framing issue to compensate for, she handed it back. Oddly, the photo was intended for our hosts at the location and I don't remember giving it to them. The A.D. ended up riding in the same vehicle as me on the way back into town, and there was a subtle bit of mustard when she remarked generally about how people should be enthusiastic about filmmaking or not involved - not that she would have been talking about me. Her only hint of anything "negative" would be that when she asked me about something math-related about continuity I had nothing because in any other continuity gig I had I didn't have to add up film footage, only monitor each shot and take that was done. I had thought the camera crew took care of that and I only noted exposure and lens info. But even then despite being a little sun stroked by the end of the day I am certain I was purely polite with her and only got wind of her dark side weeks later in post-mortem chats. I had mentioned that I was not strictly a continuity person and was only there to help out as a former classmate and friend of the three key crew, and that was only mentioned so that I was not passing myself off as anything more. Apart from my own projects, I have avoided doing continuity since. I suspect that much of that A.D.'s attitude about me might have resulted from my re-statement Monday night that I was not due to come in Tuesday. She likely fanned the flames of frustration my friend felt at that point. When I see a shot from that first day, I think of it as mostly positive snap-shots and the film itself turned out very well and it should have gotten more exposure. Given what was known at the time, there is a certain inevitability to it but not any predictability. There was no obvious gravity point in that case study. People frequently come onto a project for a day, and I think they actually used a few continuity people that week. I put all of my cards on the table in advance. Undisclosed expectations are generally the root of conflict on this kind of thing. I don't usually change course when I've decided something, and would have no reason to expect that a known open shift would not be filled and would be left open with the expectation that "don't mean" that I am going to honour an agreement to do something menial as a prior commitment. I was a volunteer. Perhaps the only one on the set. I didn't lose them a day or put them over budget. The person who did was chastised but never shut out as a friend. It took me years to let myself off the hook and realize that I was taken for granted. And the undisclosed expectations were not mine. This kind of anecdote I think might be of use in building teams and airing any concerns during the early phase where people are buzzed about a project and just happy people are willing to show up. #GuardedOptimism.

Low Noon

There are two people in as many years who have been frienemies from the filmmaking side of my life intersecting with the other side of my life I don't freely blog much about, the job-job side that is almost enough to pay my rent. I once thought it was a amusing quip to end a bio calling myself writer-director-security guard. I have what I'm told is a very good HDV camera, two choices of good editing software on a laptop that is "in the shop" and a new MacBook Pro that seems to take so much getting used to I want to return it. Since 2009 I have been able to make some strong shorts, but have fallen short of the goal and only made a few and not with the preparation and commitment from all which is needed to do it right. I also have to improve my game, despite an aversion to even the word "game" itself. I have improved my writing and have been able to refine some old stuff and I'll be shooting a lot more this year. But a life is like a body where all could be well except the broken pinky finger which ends up being your main focus while it is injured and untreated. //////////////////// I was posted at a bank on Monday. Overheard conversations had been about the Oscars the night before and the prospect of Toronto Crack Mayor Rob Ford appearing as a guest of Jimmy Kimmel. I am wearing a yellow vest with security on it while standing in and around an ATM vestibule and often outside in the cold having forgotten my proper winter uniform hat. Along comes a woman to the door who seems familiar but her mouth is covered by a collar and without the wide, pleasant eyes you see from her on a stage or in 2004 when I first met her she did not register as anyone specific. Despite wearing the same jacket, boots and pants she had on when attending a recent film screening by a mutual friend, I didn't immediately think she was _____ until she was opening a door beside me and entering the vestibule. Then I thought she had plenty of approach time to recognize me, and I stand out, and unlike most of the people who pass me on their way in or out (complete strangers) there was no hello of any kind. That in a way could confirm that this was the person I suspected. I actually mentioned an issue I had with her a few blogs back. There would be no danger of her chancing to read it, because she did not accept either of my FB requests back in 2008 or so. At the screening I went out of my way to say hi by name as I was leaving, but I think she ignored my hello and wave the first time. Fair enough. She would have been paying respects to our mutual friend who had achieved a feature. But I mean people usually have periphery, and most respect the Godfather rule of "keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer" even though I've often thought that axiom doesn't seem practical. It boils down to a chill that was not present back in 2004. After seeing a play of hers last year, I made the effort to invite her into a project. But there may have been a mind f**k there. I've come to a certain conclusion after much reflection that in her case the eyes are not at all a window to the soul. There can be an aesthetic to a person's eyes up close that may persuade that there is a soul, but these are tools of most charismatic people. You don't know who someone is until they are frustrated or want something or have made a judgement based on misinformation. I don't hang very often. I have made room for some events and participation between whatever shifts of work I am thrown into. So "the hang" that is s important with building groups may often be forgone. So if someone wants to put a spin on anything, it likely will be outside of my sphere. I am certain that the first hint of aloofness at a screenwriting circle meeting might have been just before she shared her theory that I am to blame for a troop falling apart. /////////////// Oddly, the first from that group who met me in a uniform standing outside a bank had softened since that group was dissolved and he had apologized. It occurred to me mentally that this would have been the time to respond with a "me too" or something, but since it was not the case and I was not wrong in questioning the way funds were to be allotted for his own project alone after being raised ostensibly for four unknown scripts to be voted on. . . I had said my piece and suffered through the hot seat for that. I still say that was a cordial and psychologically relaxing chance meeting and it's good to know there is no ongoing resentment there. ////////////// But in a cold March Monday at noon 2014, as I stood waiting for this person to leave who had not met my eyes, I had my hat off and there was no chance that I would be mistaken for anyone else. Had she looked at me I'd have to have waved. But as a rule I don't stare of hover while someone is approaching a bank machine. Though I did think of her as someone who had badmouthed me and caused me some strain, I would have been polite and in fact intended to croak out her name and say hi just as a human being, but my unconscious must have overridden that impulse and would not allow me to speak. In my gut, I felt that without give and take I would be a puppy chasing after someone who has kicked me. ***********@#!%$^&#********* Even though 11 years ago I had a producer drop in on a job-site who proved to be my worst antagonist, that person at least knew of my other job in advance. But even she was coming from an "office boss" kind of background wanted to see the director she was working with in a more menial setting. (So it must have frustrated that person when she lost the battles to come.) ***********@#!%$^&#********* This current frienemy, someone with several Facebook friends in common and who had been a presence in some organizations with which I was involved, clearly didn't know me well enough to greet me as a person and likely would have felt the uniform I wore was an elephant in the room or that it meant I was a phoney posing as a filmmaker the rest of my life. But that is on her. Maybe she thought I was embarrassed and it was on me to put on a hyper-enthused show. But that decision was removed from me by whatever controls the ability to make myself speak. Right or wrong, like a movie audience, I stood my the vestibule windows and watched her leave. There was a little spring in her step that seemed acted. ////////////////// The whole time I'm thinking this is creepy. But you know, here is an actress seeing someone who makes films in what may be a vulnerable state and she does have the ability to look past it and diffuse any real or imagined tension but she chose not to. It's so outside of my nature to be rude that my inner monologue screams out the script, "Hey Ms E_____. Is this your area?" But no. I can pretend non-verbal cues are in the imagination, and that the chill in my nerves to any past exchange is just my imagination. But apparently my central nervous system wouldn't let me be disingenuous. Of course I get thinking I failed the love-thy-enemy challenge yet again. However, any time I have forced by voice to work it is like an e-mail that doesn't have to be filtered through human interaction and visual counterpoint. //////////////// So all it well as I turn this over in my head and wonder why today I failed to greet friendly someone who merely failed to greet me friendly. I end up leaving the subway train after work and visiting a the Palmerston library which was a familiar place when I lived in the Annex between 1997 and 2003. I left with a couple of DVDs, Shock Treatment, and John Carter, neither of which I had yet seen, and a book I used to have from which only the dust cover survives a loan to a friend, "Further Along the Road Less Travelled" by M. Scott Peck. Something besides free newspapers to read on the bus. At least until my eyelids get heavy. Spiritual self-help. But I had been intending to re-read it every time I tidied my apartment and fount the useless cover. I can't be completely cynical about the non-events of the day. They would not make much of a pitch for a movie. I have more positive things to consider. A couple of people I know have had screenings of their features these past weeks, one of which retains writing I did for it while at college between 1991 and 1994. Another friend phoned after reading my draft of a script she commissioned. She read it on the plane to Vancouver and called me a few times to thank me and discuss it. And it is one of those discussions where comments are specific and things were actually read and noticed. So maybe I have that kind of thing as a counterpoint these days. Maybe I don't have to hump every leg begging to be liked. Some fall away. Someday I'll have memoirs worth folding together into a book, assuming books exist then. As long as I keep paying my rent more or less I still have a horizon of accumulated full stories, drafts, and other crap to refine and shoot and beg and coerce people to sit through.

Cinema Spin: John Carpenter's Halloween

The opinion of a movie critic is only marginally more interesting than the gossip and lobby group marketing that crowds the entertainment pages. Any accurate observation is likely to be an obvious one, and sometimes the most banal or tedious drama can be heaped with praise merely because it will not satisfy the masses and therefore one will seem “better than” to prop it up. The reverse principle is at work when it comes to the ghetto that sci-fi, fantasy, action-adventure and horror (genres that are the genres that we call “genre fare” as a catch-all) usually find themselves in as a stigma. This is partially enforced by critics who don’t want to be caught elevating something fun and/or would rather be writing an essay on social ills and speculating on how the underclass is controlled by its entertainment. It is also enforced by actors who want to be the special effect, the element that has a disproportionate amount of focus, as opposed to the technique of the director and his/her team. If an actor is bouncing off the walls with personality (Silver Linings Playbook) or suffering drug withdrawal or falling off the wagon, it likely will be in a story that has a meandering plot but it will be forgiven because the director gave them freedom. Of course actors will talk up work that is personally satisfying, but that doesn’t mean the movie is satisfying. And if all the director needs to do is stand back and cover the acting epiphany in a two-shot, an over-shoulder, and a single on each actor that might very well be enough to earn a Best Director nomination or Best Choice of Subject Matter. I don’t begrudge Steven Spielberg his Oscars for directing Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan, but arguably a less talented director could have covered those scripts and snagged the Oscar; Had he won for Jaws, E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark, then I would have rejoiced because then it would be more clearly the director’s contribution to the impact of the movie and not the inherent gravitas of the subject matter. John Carpenter’s Halloween often plays out in masters because they didn’t have time for coverage. This is only hurt in one scene Jamie Lee Curtis notes in the DVD commentary – where a close-up of her disgust that she has the knife in her hand would have helped explain why she tosses it away, since for years audiences have grumbled about the seeming convenience and illogic of not keeping the knife handy. It wasn’t logic, it was emotion – revulsion. Close-ups can be over-used, and in small-screen the reasonable fear is that the perfect master shot will be disposed of for bland close-ups of faces and that in comedy the dialogue or sustained tension or foreground-background contrast may be lost with ham-fisted close-ups and cut-ins telling the audience what is important. Halloween gains more than it loses from having very little coverage. It is intended to be seen on as large a screen as possible, and some people can’t be bothered. On a cell-phone video, a wide image that might have been grand and epic ill seem like puny actors dwarfed by scenery. The seriousness of this is that the grammar of cinema that had evolved through Hitchcock and Spielberg has little value to some producers whose understanding is not much different than that of an average movie-goer or viewer who see a movie purely because they believe the actor is the quality control factor. I would even go so far as to say that the tradition of marking progress of a shooting day in terms of eights of a page of script covered is misleading. Just because the film team “got” the page content from one camera does not mean they can revert to it as a patch if they don’t have a beat or line or special shot from the angle the director needs. The frame is part of the communication, not merely the conveyance of it. Here is a controversial statement, but I’m not inviting debate. I know there are cinema sacred cows. I’m just going to say it as I say most things, like I am pulling the pin out of a grenade and throwing it into a room I am not in and running away: I don’t think of Robert Altman as a master, God rest his soul. His back-up director on A Prairie Home Companion Paul Thomas Anderson demonstrates more ambition and facility with the tools of directing in his own films than Altman. To the extent that when I see amusing scene transitions in Short Cuts I am not sure they came from the director. Maybe they were in the script. His more verbal and ramshackle movies, miking even the extras and keeping the coverage loose rather than “manipulating” the audience get by on charming actors, improvisation and subject matter. If you want to see what he is made of watch The Gingerbread Man, a thriller where there is no place to hide – the sort of genre that a director’s director should embrace. Or see Popeye, a movie where realism is not especially helpful. The actors are very game, but the movie is too cluttered. A pair of set-piece moments like the wrestling match and the squid-punching are amusing enough that they might have been shot by a second unit. If an award winning Robert Altman (say Gosford Park with story co-written written by Bob Balaban despite being somewhat stogie) were assigned to Robert Rodriguez to direct with the same cast and budget I have no doubt that Los Hooligan would make the better movie. Altman, however, would not have been able to direct From Dusk Til Dawn. John Carpenter’s Halloween has maintained some status and respect in comparison to the sequels, reboots, remakes and imitators. It plays as formal and elegant. But not without annoying detractors chiming in. There was a Facebook link asking if Halloween is still scary after all these years, on the authority of a screening for ten “Millennials.” If these are people born on or after the millennium, then in the year 2013 they were no older than 13, which may or may not be too young. They can’t be expected to champion their father’s favourites from when he was 13. They are likely to dismiss the shooting style of most films from the seventies and eighties, as opposed to the clean video-game graphics look of a digital movie. It is heartbreaking that some people under 20 don’t realize how inferior the Star Wars prequels are to the original trilogy. But I digress. The truth about the reputation of John Carpenter and late producer co-writer Debra Hill’s Halloween is that the first onslaught of critics got it wrong and then the Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice give the movie proper credit and recognized its Hitchcock homage and the care with which it was made and this caused the other critics to remarkably recant. I don’t want to slam a Toronto International Film Festival programmer, but Cameron Bailie published a smarticle in Now many moons ago trying to retro-spin Halloween and the career of John Carpenter with the idea that Andrew Sarris was wrong and the other critics were brainwashed by him and the movie is really not anything special. The take-away from that is “Cameron Baillie doesn’t like John Carpenter and hates Halloween.” His piece appeared to be written for smug types who have not even seen the film, the most serious cinephiles who can turn the buzz of a great flick into the doldrums of discussion. The official consensus remains that John Carpenter’s Halloween is a well made and entertaining flick. If any outstanding movie happens to occupy the genre ghetto, it has an uphill battle with the “opinions of record.” It is actually a remarkable testimony that so many critics flip-flopped after Andrew Sarris showed them the error of their ways. Halloween had been cited by alarmists and arm-chair politicians looking to scapegoat Hollywood for violence or a puritanical view of women but Carpenter and Debra Hill have repeatedly slapped those assumptions down. The victims of Michael Meyers in this movie get killed because they are not aware and are buy thinking about other distractions. And Jamie Lee Curtis has made the point that in the supposed “exploitation films” she has made in her years as horror “scream queen” her characters were smart and fought back against adversity.

Pet Peeves - film and ads

I had in mind a topic to blog about which had nothing to do with what is now the first pet peeve on my mind. First, I'm sure some insufferable boob is going to say, "If you don't like ads there is nobody forcing you to use the website." That is the kind of remark that deserves a slap in the head with a dead fish. I finally make my way to google and blogger and click "create new post" and lately what I get is a blank screen with nothing but an ad banner and at the bottom a "send feedback" button which I may have use for. If I want to actually see where to put my subject line and the body of my blog entry I have to click refresh. This I find out purely by experimenting. When I sign into a hotmail account, I see at the top an indication like, "a password is not enough," which looks like the name of a philosophically horrific song raising money for internet stupidity. To circumvent that I have to highlight the address bar and either go to another site or type hotmail again and then I am in. So I'm learning two things from msn in that case: They want to force me to give them a phone number or credit card or some other perhaps false verification of identity for an account I have had for 13 years (which is something I don't respect) and the security of their stupid system can be gotten around (which I also can't say I respect). I have heard that something on the horizon will replace hotmail accounts entirety, but have received no alerts and it may have merely been hype for the new service. Some of us have records of hotmail messages archived in such a way that there would be a loss if they were deleted. I don't know how to fight these things without seeming naive. What I had in mind was to talk about filmmaker pet peeves. Mainly the way that aspects of production are played off without context. An actor brags, "We don't need to use monitors or video assist. The camera man can do that. And I don't like the director looking at a monitor during the take. He should be looking at me." Or somebody says, "Oh, out director doesn't bother with storyboards. He just makes up his mind as we go along. That keeps it all fresh. he doesn't need the crutch of storyboard sketches." There seems to be nobody responding to those kinds of sound bytes, and so they are taken at face value. This drives me nuts. About the actor saying a director should be looking at him/her during the take, the actor is important but so is context and perspective. Even if the director is ONLY concerned about the actor, the lens and the lighting and the way the actor is framed and frankly whether a moment within a take is actually IN FRAME at all are all elements of that. And the actor's job is largely concentration. If the reality of the director standing there in his/her eye-line and staring at them is important, that actor has problems ACTING!!!!!! There IS NO director between action and cut, only your character and whatever other fictional person should be imagined there. Furthermore, the director has to sign off on the shot. It is nice if other people do to, but the director HAS TO be able to give the minimum direction of YES or NO. The director can sign-off blindly and take the cinematographer's word for it, but chances are the cinematographer might not be operating the camera either and if HE isn't using a monitor to at least see how the lights interact with the scene then it would come down to the camera operator's sign-off. However competent or extraordinary each member of the crew may be, the director should WANT to be the person who signs off. Especially because there may always be one detail that shouldn't be taken for granted and he should have to take responsibility when it comes to edit and there are no surprises about something being there you don't want or something missing that should be there. About the storyboard, this is not spelled out enough. The kind of storyboards to avoid are the ones that a studio might give to the director of a tent-pole film and say "just shoot this." A good storyboard for s similar size film might be Paul Verhoven's personal storyboards for Starship Troopers which depict the shooting plan pretty much as it emerged on screen, and with the added benefit that he happens to be an excellent draftsman so the illustrations are true to the subjects. Whether it happens all the time or not, I like the idea of the director drawing each frame within a shot and having a plan. If a movie were 100 pages of screenplay, I estimate that two and a half weeks of 8-hour days could be spent on the director doing the first pass of thumbnail storyboards for a feature. That is thought and time and close regard of the scenes that will not be spent during the high tension of making the movie itself when time is of the essence. Plans can be modified or adapted as circumstances change, but having done storyboards makes a person mentally prepared for how to use the camera as visual reinforcement to contain the relationships and moments of the story. They can also help narrow down locations. If someone expects to be a beggar and not a chooser with locations or sets, they might compromise the best way to shoot a scene. For example, being unable to get the camera far enough away from the actors to blur out the background because the location is too confined might be something that they are willing to compromise or it might be an argument that can be defended persuasively with storyboarding (and with pointing to the sketch and explaining "this is the character and this is scribble is the blur because he is isolated from others and should have his own focal plane"). The camera (except in faux documentary style which I dislike) should not be playing catch-up with the actors. There is nothing unusual about giving the actor the edge of the stage and the confines in which he/she has to work. Sometimes it will be just their hands acting in close-up, sometimes just the face, and sometimes head-to-toe body language. The actor's requirements include technical competence. They can certainly bring something to the table, and may have a better-motivated start position or an idea of how to be introduced. But even those are best as early discussions instead of last minute so their implications can be applied throughout the story and not as a whim or as a concession to a star's ego. If you are lucky, Samuel L. Jackson has a character-motivated way to first show his religious character in Black Snake Moan, in a prayer-like position leaning on a vehicle. If you are unlikely and actress doesn't feel like wearing the hat the movie is named after and scenes that have already been done with it have to be abandoned, as detailed in "Claire's Hat" the bootleg documentary by Bruce McDonald. I'm sure there are other examples but those were the ones I had to get off my chest today. In case anyone is reading.